Leadership and systemic innovation: socio-technical systems, ecological systems, and evolutionary systems design

ABSTRACT

Innovation comprises an area of human activity that bridges disciplinary boundaries in epistemological domains as well as action frameworks in ontological domains. It involves a complex system composed of people, organizations, role structures, skills, and knowledge bases, in addition to the hardware produced in workshops and factories. This paper argues that Systemic Innovation, as an emerging field of praxis in its own right, provides an integral and actionable framework for the curation of human initiatives that span human, technological, environmental, and generational concerns with lifelong learning and creative design initiatives. To do this, the field draws on socio-technical systems theory (STS), the study of living systems and ecological system dynamics (including such areas of embodied action as permaculture), and evolutionary systems design (itself comprised of general evolution theory (GST), social systems design methodology (SSM), and lifelong and transformative learning praxes). How these frameworks are used to guide systemic innovation in service of life, increasingly robust and supportive living environments, and future-creating scenarios of systemic viability and thrivability is at the heart of the field of Systemic Innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• Systemic innovation
• thrivability
• socio-technical systems
• evolutionary systems design (ESD)
• human ecology (HE)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander Laszlo

Alexander Laszlo, Ph.D., is Director General of the Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research (L-INPR), and President of the Board of Directors of the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS) where he also serves as the Advisory Editor of their open access peer-reviewed online journal Systema. He served as the 57th President and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), and was Director of the Doctoral Program in Management at the Graduate School of Business Administration & Leadership (EGADE-ITESM), Mexico, and Founding Director of the Doctoral Program in Leadership and Systemic Innovation at ITBA, Argentina. He teaches on evolutionary leadership, collaboration, and systems thinking at a variety of MBA and Doctoral programs internationally and serves as Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial School of the Management Center Innsbruck, Austria, as Faculty Member in the Leadership of Sustainable Systems program at both the Master’s and Doctoral levels at Saybrook University, and has served as Faculty Mentor in the MBA in Sustainable Entrepreneurship program of the Green MBA at Dominican University of California. He has been Faculty Member at both the MBA in Sustainable Business at Bainbridge Graduate Institute and the MBA in Sustainable Management at the Presidio School of Management since the first year of operation of each program, and has served as Core Faculty in the Organization Systems Renewal Graduate Program for the Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership at Pinchot University. He has worked for the UNESCO Regional Office for Science & Technology for Europe, the Italian Electric Power Agency, and the Office of Postsecondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education, has held visiting appointments with the London School of Economics and the European University Institute, and has been named a Level I Member of the National Research Academy of Mexico (SNI). He is on the Editorial Boards of Systems Research & Behavioral Science; World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research; Kybernetes: The International Journal of Cybernetics, Systems and Management Sciences; Systema–Connecting Matter, Life, Culture and Technology; Markets and Business Systems; Organisational Transformation & Social Change; and Managing Global Transitions: International Research Journal, recipient of the Gertrude Albert Heller Award, the Sir Geoffrey Vickers Memorial Award, as well as of the Förderpreis Akademischer Klub award of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and finalist for the 2003 Beyond Gray Pinstripes award of the World Resources Institute and the Aspen Institute for educational work in sustainable business. He is President of the Honorary Board of Advisors of the World Complexity Science Academy (WCSA), Vice-President for Education on the Board of Directors of Unity Foundation, serves on the Advisory Committee for the National Systems Conferences of the Centre of Excellence in Systems Science of the Indian Institute of Technology (Jodhpur), and is author of over ninety journal, book, and encyclopedia publications, with What is Reality? The New Map of Cosmos and Consciousness with Ervin Laszlo most recent. He is also a 6th Degree Black Belt in Chung Do Kwan style of Tae Kwon Do and a 2nd Degree Black Belt in Shotokan style of Karate, and is a trained Challenge Course facilitator. Born in Fribourg, Switzerland, he is holder of a PhD in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Policy from the University of Pennsylvania from where he also received his MA in History and Sociology of Science. His BA is from Haverford College, with a major in International and Comparative Political Science and a minor in Human Physiology. His intellectual passion is to apply systems thinking, policy analysis, and technology assessment to processes of individual and collective empowerment that foster conditions for a thrivable planet. His professional objective is to engage in educational and community-building activities that curate the nurturance spaces for actions at systemic leverage points that help emerge a global.